The New Age of Innovation is divided into an Introduction and eight chapters. The Introduction will tell you how the authors came to write the book and how their key ideas of N = 1 and R = G were developed.

The Transformation of Business is the authors' description of how business is moving toward a focus on the individual customer experience and drawing resources from everywhere.

Chapter two discusses Business Processes as the way a company can gain competitive advantage by reconfiguring resources in real time. There are many examples here, but not much guidance on what it means for you.

The Analytics chapter calls for sophisticated systems that can mine every scrap of data, identify trends, and reveal opportunities. The emphasis is on mining internal information but the part about R = G seems to have gotten lost. There's virtually no discussion of outside data sources or collaborators.

IT Matters is about the technical architecture for innovation. It is primarily a wish list about what IT ought to do. This could easily be converted into a checklist for system capability if you're considering changes in your IT systems.

Chapter five, Organizational Legacies, is about how companies have cultures and values and those cultures and values need to change if the business is going to change successfully. The main illustration in this chapter is the first Indian firms to offer outsourcing. The authors don't seem to know about the second wave of outsourcing firms, mostly founded after 2000 who are modeling their business plans on what to do differently than their predecessors.

This was the most disappointing chapter of the book for me. There were lots of neat diagrams and lots of pronouncements but there didn't seem to be much understanding of how very hard it is to change a company's culture. The entire process is treated as similar to changing the operating system in an IT department, technically difficult perhaps, but nothing some good planning and dedicated engineers can't handle.

The chapter on Efficiency and Flexibility highlights a challenge that every company that has ever tried to be both nimble and efficient has faced. There is a distinct tension between the two and it is often not resolvable. The chapter also discusses problems moving from the old way to the new way.

Chapter seven, Dynamic Reconfiguration of Talent, makes the point that you need to treat employees and vendors as unique individuals. The examples are good, but firmly rooted in IT. You won't find much here about companies designed for innovation, like WL Gore or who revamped their innovation model around business practices like Proctor & Gamble.

The final chapter, An Agenda for Managers, promises that the author's model is the one that will be the basis for innovation and value creation. For me, this was a mixed bag of a chapter. There's good advice like "learn by doing, take small steps." But then there's a twelve step agenda that offers gloriously non-specific advice like you might get from a fortune cookie. Example: "A long-term focus with short-term actions is the essence of organizational transformation."

Read this book if you want a deep, thoughtful discussion of some major trends in business. There are many statements and examples that will get you to stop and think.

Don't be surprised if a lot of what you read seems familiar. N = 1 echoes what Peppers and Rogers covered in One-to-One Marketing. R = G sounds a lot like "The World is Flat." This is an informed rumination by a couple of very smart men about how the world of business is changing

When you are done you will have stretched your thinking. You will ponder how the world is changing and how smart the authors of the book are.

Those are not bad outcomes. But they aren't practical ones, either.

Unlike many books on new economies or global changes, this work cites examples from around the world. C. K. Prahalad and M. S. Krishnan provide illustrative case studies from firms in India, Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere. They examine the various interactions among these firms and locales, grounding their theoretical discussions in reality. To add even more clarity, they also include many drawings and charts; unfortunately, these tend to force a simplistic Cartesian graphing system onto complex changes. Likewise, their abbreviations are more memorable than clear. Overall, though, these are minor glitches in an innovative and useful study. The authors' analyses of how firms are interacting internationally, and redesigning themselves and the nature of business in the process, are both interesting and valuable. Its discussions of broad trends are unusually well-informed. getAbstract recommends this book to executives and others committed to keeping up with change, especially on a large, even global, scale.

I like the author's statement about the significance of the ICT architecture and business processes. I also like the way they describe ICT architecture making it clear that not all applications can come off-the-shelf. I believe that a grown ICT architecture is a major inhibitor to innovation and flexibility in the enterprise and the authors show why. If this book had a title like "The future of business processes and ICT architectures" and provided a longer list of tools and concepts for transformation I would give it 5 stars.
Instead I had a hard time deciding how to rate this book. On one hand it is very entertaining and even scary in the chapter on human talent, on the other hand it is very much on the surface and does not contain a sound proposal how to deal with all that change.
Like other reviewers I must admit that the title "New Age of Innovation" is quite misleading. It is true that the authors make a statement about the importance of innovation but than fail to link their concept of the future enterprise to innovation. So the topic becomes implicit and one is left to his or her own thoughts about it.
I am also not very happy with the statement that enterprise success will primarily depend on incremental innovation and that radical innovation is more or less an arbitrary event one should not count on. Please accept my apologies If I misinterpreted the authors in this point. At least I think this topic lacks the clarity it deserves.
I would recommend this book to executives who have some time to spend on an airport and would like to be entertained (or scared, depending on who you work for) by a vision of an ultra-mobile and global future. Some substance is provided by a long list of examples and a very general framework provides a scientific touch.
I can not recommend this book to readers looking for advise how to design their corporate strategy because it a) lacks the scientific or at least quantitative basis to be considered correct in its assumptions and b) only provides very high-level and limited advise.
I am also not very happy with the lack of references to other literature in this field.

After I had the oportunity to listen the "Soundview executive book summary" of "The age of Innovation" y bought and read the book.
This new book of Prahalad brings the oportunity to reevaluate and redisign the general strategy for most enterprices. It is a great book.
Erasmo Marin Cordova

I really respect Prahalad, but this book is probably the worst I have read about innovation (the title is misleading because the book is not about 'Innovation' at all). He iterates around two simple ideas of current 'drivers' for innovation (R=1 N=G), which are crystal clear for most of us who live in this globalized world.

The book is full of anecdotes poorly constructed, that barely address the point he tries to make and that have very little academic rigor. His constant references to ICICI, ING and so on are tiring.

For drivers of innovation, go to tradicional literature such as Schumpeter. Utterback and Christiansen are also very good. For something more practical information about innovation embedding, read 'Innovation to the Core' or 'Innovator's Guide to Growth'.

This book is certainly worth reading, and especially by those executives that do not read much (the ones with the big egos and short attention spans). I admire the authors, but I am also increasingly annoyed by the annoying self-referential insularity that charactizes "star" authors who seem to not have read much by anyone else. Publishers need to begin demanding a proper literature search and more due diligence in "connecting" the reader to dots created by others.

Let's be crystal clear: Stewart Brand, the original editor of the Co-Evolution Quarterly and the Whole Earth Review, and the founder of the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference, did more inthe 1970's and 1980's for the concept of co-creating value that this pair will ever achieve.

More recently, in the 1990's and the past ten years, Collective Intelligence, the Power of Us (a Business Week cover story 20 June 2005 that the author's do not deign to notice), Wisdom of the Crowds, Smart Mobs, and so on, have all focused on the core concept of co-creation of value.

This book loses one star for its pretentions as an immaculate conception of a core concept that has been understood by the rest of us for the past forty years.

Now, having vented in defense of other scholars and practitioners that the authors should have respected, here are my flyleaf notes that easily warrant a solid four.

+ Roadmap for business leaders that does a superb job of showing how strategy and business processes both need to receive more respect as well as deliberate management.

+ Every individual must be treated as a singular client, and no firm has the resources to do it all--being able to connect the single client with a need and the single third party able to meet the need may be the ultimate business process.

+ Most interesting to me, as a deep admirer of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, the book that showed me my final calling as intelligence officer to the public, for which I and 23 others created a non-profit, the authors drop the one billion extreme poor from their client list, and focus only on the 4 billion above that line.

+ Properly embraced, these four billion are billed by the authors--accurately and wisely in my view--as a major source of innovation and need that can power the global economy by 2015.

+ Role of Information Technology (IT), which Paul Strassmann has demonstrated is often a negative return on investment, is to bridge the gap between strategic intent and "capacity to act."

+ Analytics in this book are primarily mathematic and data mining of existing digital information, with a token reference to external information. "Intelligence," "decision support," "competitive intelligence," and "commercial intelligence" are not terms to be found in this book. The authors appear to be oblivious to the existence of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) founded in 1986 and just now beginning to reach its potential.

+ The authors place great emphasis on the importance of the individual employee and customer, and again arouse my ire as they fail to refer back to such giants as Wilensky, Carkhuff, or Cleveland (see list of 10 books they either have not read or have chosen to forget).

+ Global standards plus local effectiveness is the key to mobilizing four billion new consumers.

+ They emphasize the importance of understanding the "hidden costs of the inflexible and archaic internal systems that exist in most firms." They might also have thought to cite Ben Gilad on how most information reaching CEOs is late, biased, subjective, incomplete, and often wrong.

+ The three core concepts for the manager in a hurry to retain are: first, treat all others (consumers, employees, suppliers, regulators) as co-equals; second, do continuous analytics; and third, be ready to be turn on a dime. Efficiency is TIRED, flexibility (which means some redundancy) is WIRED.

For myself the real eye-opener in this book was the several case studies of what FedEx and others are doing with the detail that they amass from making their entire system transparent--not only are they tracking every package, but also every link and every inquiry--and then making sense of that to offer new services to specific INDIVIDUALs. I also appreciated the references to IBM's "ecosystem" of individuals and talents, and the emphasis on how many complex tasks can be "de-skilled" and migrated to very low-cost largely uneducated individuals, spreading the wealth while reserving the higher loads for increasingly scarce "full operational capability" programmers and managers.

I liked the authors' reference to A. V. Dhamakrishnan of Ramco India, and his focus on "evidence-based management" (page 165. I am considering publication of a work by many others on Health Intelligence, and the term I have found that rocks the health industry every time is "evidence-based medicine."

The authors conclude that social networks are now moving into business-oriented collaboration platforms, and provide a listing of offerings that is long and interesting but not at all complete. Visit ArnoldIT.com for the real edge of the IT envelope.

This is a very fine book. It may be that publishers need to commission the literature survey, and then identify others to write forewords and afterwords that connect the dots. In no way do I demean the brilliant building block provided by this book--I am simply irritated that it hangs in space as an immaculate conception with no respect demonstrated for the considerable work by others--and to publish a book in 2008 and not even note the Business Week cover story of 20 June 2005 on "The Power of Us," sorry, but that merits a spanking all by itself. Due diligence, anyone?

Other books, both old and new:
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
The Knowledge Executive
Organizational Intelligence (Knowledge and Policy in Government and Industry)
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

The authors might wish to demonstrate in their writing that which they preach so assidiously in this book.

Hamel and Prahalad made us think about the core competences of organisations. Now, Prahalad and co-author Krishnan introduce us to two new equations for a world that will be driven by co-creation and global networks. In their recent book 'The new age of innovation' they describe what R=G and N=1 will mean for your organisation.

Profs. Prahalad and Krishnan describe how individual corporations have been aggregating the needs of consumers and mass produced products and services for them for a long time. The variation was in size, colour and other attributes, but that was it. Nowadays, we see a move where multiple corporations are working on fulfilling the needs of individual consumers. To deliver these personal solutions, corporations do not focus on what's available within their own boundaries or supply-chain. They use whatever is available wherever in the world. In short, it is all about individual choice (N=1) and global resources (R=G).

Convincingly, they describe what this means for the social architecture and the technical architecture of the firm. In a world with global access to resources, there is a need for processes and availability of data in a transparent and coherent way. Otherwise, work cannot be sourced globally. On top of this, you also have to think about dynamic reconfiguration and demand anticipation. From the consumer side, you have to focus on the preferences of individuals and the capacity to co-create with consumers.

It all may sound a little high-level, many examples and cases are used to illustrate the point though. The book does not deliver a simple recipe to deal with all the described trends. It does show necessary steps and needed infrastructure, but not all these elements are readily available or completely understood at the moment.

I agree with the other reviews that the title of the book can catch you off guard if you really expect a book on innovation. Nevertheless, the authors present their case in an original way. It is also clear some serious strategic consequences follow from the two simple formulas of N=1 and R=G. Well worth the read!

This book is an odd one. I liked the content, and the ideas presented. In fact, I forwarded several of the ideas and examples found in the book to my corporate office for consideration. The problem is, for some reason, the book reads choppy. It jumps from one company to another, citing examples of what they are doing in relation to the thesis, but these citations lack depth.

Still, there are stellar ideas inside this book. The only problem is that one has to continually cherry pick ideas from the book. I think everyone could gain information inside. Just not all of it. I would still recomment this book, even with that thought in mind.

The New Age of Innovation is good but miss-titled. This is not a book about how to be innovative. Rather the book advances an idea that all companies must face a world where they deal with customers individually and get their resources globally. The authors drive this home in a mantra of N=1 (there is one customer) and R=G (your resources are global). The N=1 R=G idea is cute and it is used throughout the book,but as you read the book N=1 R=G becomes the rational for everything and therefore nothing.

It is hard to give a book that covers such a breadth of important topics a mediocre review, but I have thought about this and come to the conclusion that this book is O.K. I am glad I read it as there are some good things here, just not to the level that I could heartily recommend it. If you are interested in these ideas and study the subject of enterprise strategy and management, then please buy this book as it will round out your experience. If you are looking for innovative ideas, then I am sorry this is not the book for you - in my opinion.

Besides the book not being about innovation, or really about how you drive co-created value, it is pretty good with some very good ideas. Prahalad and Krishnan start with an interesting premise - that all markets are not individual and that no company will have all the resources at its disposal to serve those individual markets. Put that way it provides a fresh way of thinking about global business. However that fresh thinking quickly devolves into a way of explaining a large range of business decisions from Wal-Mart to UPS, to GM to ICICI and others. I am always suspicious when a framework can cover such a diverse set of companies - not that the framework is poor, but rather that it is capturing something that we already know and have already dealt with. That is more the case in this book and the reason why it gets only 3 stars.

This book had the potential to redefine some basic tenants of corporate thinking - in other words extend beyond Treacy and Wiersema value disciplines. The N=1 R=G is a simple framework that requires blending multiple disciplines to delivery. However, the book does not do that - rather it advances the idea of intergration across all fronts without a target destination. This makes the book comprehensive, but it also makes it disjointed in some areas and therefore difficult to see how it would really apply to my company or my situation.

Strengths:

The presentation of these two ideas (customer centrality and global sourcing) is strength in that these issues are rarely discussed in an integrated fashion.

Incorporation of a comprehensive view of the enterprise including its business processes, analytics/information, information technology and social/managerial technologies. Few books have ever looked at the enterprise from such a multi-faceted view.

Chapter 6 on efficiency and flexibility, it should have been the second chapter of the book as it puts the N=1 R=G into a set of clear management decisions.

The book highlights the need for the interconnectedness of the issues involved. It continually points to the need for process connectedness, visibility and transparency. It also points out the need to address decisions that are often thought of as contradictory (chapter 6) and the tools in figure 4.3 (p. 129)

Weaknesses:

The discussion of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is bold in its vision but very weak in its implementation. (See Chapter 4 review) The book talks about ICT in a major way in three chapters and not the same way in any of them.

Using multiple titles and tags for roughly the same thing which makes it unnecessarily complicated. This is seen in the way the book tries to redefine issues like business process transformation, capabilities, components, change management etc. It would have been better to use standard terms and then talked about the new insight based on the ideas of the book.

It is true that India is a hot bed of innovation and growth but to imply that Indian companies are primarily the ones that get these ideas is a bit uneven. There are many innovative and market capturing companies in India (ICICI is one that we all need to study and understand). However, the authors keep returning to these companies as the prime examples of what success will look like. This refocusing, particularly on the Indian software industry, weakens the book as it gives the reader with the miss-impression that all I need is an educated, cheap and plentiful labor source and my problems are solved - that is too simplistic and undercuts what these leaders have done.

References as there is neither a single footnote nor source in the book, when several sections are clearly based on work that I have read before. I am not saying that they are copying these materials; rather some references would have been nice and more professional. The discussion of Li & Fung is an example as much of that material was covered in a Wall Street Journal article a few years ago.

The book appears to contradict itself in several areas. The discussion of IT throughout is one also the case examples can be viewed as contradictory, particularly the use of North American and European Companies whose actions can be just as easily explained using other frameworks (Wal-Mart, UPS, ING, etc)

CHAPTER REVIEW

On a chapter by chapter level there are some good ideas - the reason it is not a one star recommendation. So if you pick up the book here is where to concentrate and here is where to be on the lookout.

Chapter 1: The Transformation of Business is a good chapter that lays out the basic premise that the focus of value is on the `centrality of the individual'. At the same time the focus of the firm is on realizing that it must "focus on access to resources not ownership of them." This is not new news, but putting the two ideas together does spark some new thinking.

Chapter 2: Business Processes should have been a killer chapter and provided a basis for repositioning process in the internet era. It did not, first it defines processes as the expression of strategy - leaving out the customer which is interesting given that N=1. Instead of focusing on process, the chapter talks about IT and the layers of IT. The chapter has a good review of ICICI - an Indian financial services company.

Chapter 3: Analytics highlights the central role that information plays in serving customers as individuals using a global network. But rather than telling you how to use information, run the business based on information, it dwells on the analytics/visibility/transparency. The chapter misses a chance to redefine management by discussing the qualities of information rather than its application and impact.

Chapter 4 IT Matters is a call for component based systems and technologies. This chapter is the most disappointing as it is filled with generalized statements regarding what IT should do and be rather than how to deliver it. If you have read books about object oriented and component based development before then you have read much of this chapter. Sorry but this chapter reads like someone who has read a lot about IT and talks about IT but does not practice it - too theoretical and aspirational

Chapter 5: Organizational Legacies starts out like a gem by highlighting the need to understand the dominant language that forms the context and the basis for managerial points of view and change management. The first part of this chapter is good; the back half looks to redefine what the book says about IT from Chapter 4 and seeks to redefine change management practices which were not needed.

Chapter 6: Efficiency and Flexibility highlights the central challenge of implementing the ideas behind N=1 and R=G how to gain the efficiency needed to serve customers at a profit and be able to meet their changing needs and changing capabilities in the supply chain. This chapter dwells too much on it being a trade off, and again returns to IT as a disconnect.

Chapter 7: Dynamic Reconfiguration of Talent discusses the people issues which are critical to making this work. If this chapter did not exist, then the book would have been another diatribe for strategy and technology.

Chapter 8: An Agenda for Managers brings all these ideas together and highlights a 12 point agenda for managers to look at. The authors believe that N=1 and R=G will be here by 2015 - sorry to say that in many industries it is here now.

If you have read this far, then thanks for considering this review. It is a good book, one that I am smarter for having read, but it is not a great book and not one I can recommend you clear the decks to read.

How to prosper in the "N = 1 and R = G" world

I have read and then reviewed all of C.K. Prahalad's previous books and thus was especially interested in reading this book, co-authored with M.S. Krishnan. As they explain in the Introduction, "We view innovation as shaping consumer expectations as well as responding continually to the changing demands, behaviors, and experiences pf consumers. We must do this by accessing the best talent and resources available anywhere in the world. These two ideas must be connected - the resources of many to satisfy the needs of one.. We suggest that this is possible only if we pay attention to the glue that enables ideas to be transformed into operations. We will focus on the business processes and analytics as the glue."

Prahalad and Krishnan acknowledge that there is a fundamental transformation now underway, worldwide, that will radically alter the very nature of an enterprise and how it creates value. This foundation of this transformation has two basic pillars:

1. "Value is based on unique, personalized experiences of consumers. [begin italics] The focus is on the centrality of the individual. [end italics] We will designate this pillar as N = 1 (one consumer at a time.)"

"2. No firm is big enough in scope and size to satisfy the experiences of one consumer at a time. [begin italics] The focus is on access to resources, not ownership of resources. [end italics] We will designate this [pillar as R = G (resources from multiple vendors and often from around the globe)."

There are several key elements of this transformation. Prahalad and Krishnan focus on five: Value is shifting from products to solutions to experience; all companies seek access to the talent, components, products, and services they need from the best sources; flexible systems are a prerequisite and must be developed; resources in a company's ecosystem must be continually configured; and finally, specific models must be developed that enable a company to focus on one consumer from among the millions. These are indeed formidable challenges. Prahalad and Krishnan suggest a number of strategies and tactics to consider when responding to them. When proceeding through the rigorously and eloquent narrative of this book, it is imperative to keep in mind that their ultimate objective is to help companies to prosper in this "N = 1 and R = G" world. To that end, they share the most important business lessons learned from a number of exemplary companies that include Amazon.com, Apple Computer, eBay, Google, ICIC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Unilever, and United Parcel Service (UPS).

To me, some of the most valuable material is provided in Chapter 5 (Pages 109-145) as Prahalad and Krishnan discuss the requirements of an information and communication technology (ICT) architecture and the governance mechanisms that can connect business processes and analytics to data and applications. In one of several graphics, Table 4.1 (Pages 124-126), they summarize the specificati9ons of the new ICT architecture in terms of four categories (i.e. "buckets"): Confronting Reality (e.g. capacity to link large systems and multiple databases), Compliance and Change (e.g. regulatory compliance and change), Evolving Capabilities (e.g. Security and privacy of data), and Enabling Foundations (e.g. from transaction-driven to event-driven systems).

Given the fundamental shift in the focus, the sources, and the processes of innovation and value creation, what do suggest for an agenda for managers to consider? They respond to that question in the final chapter. Specifically, they invoke a metaphor --- The New House of innovation - whose design and construction must be viewed as an "integrated package" in terms of its architecture, construction materials, and subsequent maintenance. The organizational transformation process must also be comprehensive and cohesive during a transition period (i.e. a "migration") of management practices to develop new skills, attitudes, and behaviors. It remains for decision-makers in each organization to design and then build its own new house pf innovation. Fortunately, they can use the information and counsel that C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan provide to guide and inform those initiatives.

Those who share my high regard for this brilliant volume are urged to check out Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World co-authored by Victor Fung, William Fung, and Yoram (Jerry) Wind as well as Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning co-authored by Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris. Also Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill and David Robertson and Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success.